Courtship Ritual Of Spiders London April 2009

©clementinedebos 2009



This is the Courtship Ritual of Spiders I had described in an earlier post. Except this time you can see images of it and the beauty of it all is it happened in my garden this afternoon as I was taking a break from my work. I took the pictures. As you know I'm drawing inspiration from it in the context of Biomimicry so this is really great! I feel so lucky to have witnessed it. What were the odds of that? I have been living in this house for the past 4 years and never have I observed such a phenomenon. This documentation will be very helpful. It is how it was described in all I read and is quite close to the diagrams I had seen. What the images here dont show is the intense dance the male performed as well as the drumming of the abdomen against the web. Fascinating it was!
I find it all very symbolic, not to have witnessed it, more how spiders weave their web, use it as a sense aid to communicate their intentions, to exchange a series of vibrations to express their feelings, their silk is stronger than steel and finally the attempt to persuade the female to be her mate. By all means I have always had a fear of spiders and a fascination for them, arent they just amazing creatures if you put aside all the prejudice and fear?
My mind is buzzing with a million ideas on how to best use all this info and to convey it in a smart fabric with a real purpose and aesthetic.
Magic is in the air!

The Courtship Ritual of Spiders

In the context of Biomimicry I am drawing inspiration from Spiders more precisely their courtship Ritual.
To sum it up, the male spider needs to signify to the female spider that he is a mate and not a meal! The female is bigger in size to the male and has a predatory instincts, yes she has lived to eat and has no feelings!
Poor male has to perform a dance, to show off to her that he is the best male she will ever find, he not only performs a very cute dance but also sings a song which translates through vibrations of his abdomen. I have heard the sound and it builds up gradually to a crescendo point, very impressive.
While he is doing all that the female watches and will decide whether he will be her mate or her meal!
If she accepts him as a mate she will signify to the male through a set of vibrations, which will then encourage the male to hop on the female.

Its fascinating such small creatures have such an elaborate yet simple way of communicating.

Now I need to get cracking on my smart sustainable woven fabric creation. If some have taken three years to develop a smart woven fabric how am I going to do that in three weeks?